Community Based Sustainable Tourism in Puerto Princesa City. Ugong Rock Adventures Case History 2014

Project Report from the year 2018 in the subject Tourism, grade: N/A, , language: English, abstract: Bunglon Cave is a jagged karst limestone tower standing out of the flatlands of alluvium and soil in the vicinity of Barangay Tagabinet. According to anecdotes from senior residents of the area, the name Bunglon is a Tagbanua term for wild dogs that used to roam the cave. The Cave is geographically situated at North 11°54'71" and East 70°31'73". From the 1970s until the 1990s, the hill was trekked by young people for its scenic and natural beauty and became a popular hangout for the locals. Aside from its recreational service, Bunglon's forest provided an important livelihood for the Tagabinet community whose occupations were mainly farming and fishing. During that period, slash and burn or kaingin farming was prevalent as well as the conversion of mangrove forests to fish pens. The highly extractive and destructive nature of these two practices took its toll on the natural environment of Bunglon which in turn seriously affected the livelihood of the community. In 1999, Mr. Kenneth Kennedy, and some member of the University of the Philippines Mountaineers (UPM) discovered one particular stalactite inside the cave which produced a haunting humming sound when knocked. He named it "Ugong Rock" from the Tagalog word "ugong" for the humming sound it made. Since then, Bunglon Cave became more popular among the community members and visitors as Ugong Rock. In the year 2000, the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC), an environmental nongovernment organization based in Puerto Princesa City visited Ugong Rock to study the unabated environmental degradation happening in the area as part of their project proposal on community-based ecotourism in the Ulugan Bay area. ELAC provided technical and legal assistance to discourage people from their environmentally destructive practices and to stop illegal activities conducted by some individuals who acted purely on self-interest and disregarded the negative impacts of their activities to the environment. As part of ELAC's activities on environmental awareness in the Ulugan Bay area, they organized the Tagabinet Community Tourism Association (TCTA) whose members were Barangay Tagabinet residents who decided to join the proposed community-based tourism project of ELAC.